


Should I stay?(or should I go?)

by sithlordkenobi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Canon Compliant, Internalized Biphobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve and bucky are not compatible, shuri is the best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22962955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithlordkenobi/pseuds/sithlordkenobi
Summary: Steve Roger's life is the one battlefield he'll never learn to navigate and the one he'll never escape from.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Should I stay?(or should I go?)

**Author's Note:**

> Getting this up was a painful process but it's done now. The paragraphs are a little bit all over the place but I'm sure yous have read worse in your time as a fic reader. Enjoy :)) title is form THAT song I can't rember the name of. 
> 
> Basically i gate the russos ans steves ending but I dint have the energy for a rewrite so I tried to write out Steve's reasoning for leaving and this is what I got.

Steve always knew he was different. He could feel it. Something inside him was off. Something inside him was wrong. In class his teachers would praise him, for his knowledge, for his artistic talent, for his polite demeanour, sometimes Steve wondered if they knew too, if they knew he was different.

  
On the school yard he would play alone, always, he would hide away in a corner sketching, or sit on a swing staring at the empty one to the right of him. His classmates didn't directly exclude him, but they didn't make an effort to make him feel welcome either. He knew that when they whispered, they were whispering about him. Maybe they knew he was different too, maybe they could sense it the same way a dog senses fear, or maybe it was because the fatherless boy with no meat on his bones was an easy target. 

  
Sometimes he would come home crying, asking his mother - begging her - for an answer as to why he couldn't just be normal, why couldn’t he just fit in? and her heart broke for him because she couldn't give him an answer. 

  
Then Bucky came barrelling into his life like a train on a track and everything changed. The first time he saw Bucky he couldn't breathe. He had gotten himself into a fight in a back ally with a kid twice his size who had kicked all the air out of his lungs. But Bucky, like a guardian angle, showed up and took him out with one swing of his right fist, and Jesus Christ did he look like an angel when he leaned down to help Steve up and ask if he was ok. 

  
Steve should have copped on then really. What normal person thinks their best friend looks like an angel? None. When he eventually did cop on he finally understood why he had felt so inherently wrong all his life. He liked boys. And not any other boy, James Buchanan Barnes. How did he know? He knew because every single time his eyes met the eyes of his best friend his heart stopped beating, and his lungs failed to take any air in, and his brain couldn't manage to form any words and any time he was bored or distracted he would find himself absent-mindedly sketching those eyes, on the corner of his copies, on the back of his hand. He had whole pages in his sketchbook just filled with those eyes. Those eyes that, if he were allowed, Steve would stare into for centuries. Those eyes that Steve had memorised every last detail of, all the shades of blue, each dash of grey and every hint of green. In between the pages in his sketchbook filled with Bucky's eyes, there were sketches of Bucky's mouth, and Bucky's nose, Bucky's jawline, Bucky's ears, his hair, his cheek, pink and purple with bruises and Bucky's hands, so many sketches of Bucky's hands. Bucky's hands that he longed to hold, Bucky's hands that he craved to feel on his face, in his hair, on his waist, his back, his neck, the hands whose touch he leaned into every time they were placed on his shoulder, his knee, his elbow. Bucky's hands whose knuckles were always covered in blood from having to fight bullies off of his best friend. Bucky's hands that, unbeknownst to Steve, craved to touch him almost as much as he himself craved the other man’s touch. 

  
But there was an even bigger problem. Or was it a miracle? Steve couldn't tell. But the fact was that he liked girls too. No girl in particular, he wasn’t close enough to any girl to like one the same way he liked Bucky. But he liked girls. He liked their smiles, the way they could brighten a room and coax a smile out of Steve even on the worst of days, he liked it when they broke the mold, when they stepped out of the box they had been put in all their lives, when they were able to let go and let their true selves filter through and not follow the rules and lies they had to in order to fulfil their ‘duties’ as women. He like watching them dance in hope that one day, maybe, he might work up the courage to ask someone to.

That's why when he fell for Peggy he knew that she would be the only woman he ever loved, the same way Bucky would be the only man he ever loved.  
But it wasn't the same. It could never be the same, and he still cried, he cried into his pillow, asking, begging and pleading to god to let him be normal. To fix him. He felt as if there was a wolf clawing at his chest, slowly and agonisingly splitting his ribcage open, snapping each of his ribs one by one, tearing at his septum and his collarbone and his shoulder. He felt as if there was a hand grabbing his heart and squeezing it until it burst. He felt as if someone was doing jumping jacks on his lungs and every time he thought about a man, thought about Bucky, God was commanding the jumper to do twenty more, fifty more, a hundred more.

  
But Peggy, Peggy kept him right. Peggy helped him find comfort in his new body, a comfort he could never have found in his old one. She wrote him letters, letters detailing what was happening with the war, letters reminiscing on her childhood in England, letters complaining about this Sergeant and that Colonel. Letters ranting and raving about anything and everything. And Steve sent letters back. He sent letters telling her how big the crowd was at his latest show, telling her which joke they laughed the hardest at and which joke fell flat, telling her how he wished he could be there helping her, and when he finally was, when he finally made it to the battle lines, she helped him find Bucky.

  
Jesus Bucky. It was always Bucky. He'd think he was getting better then he'd be drawn back in. He knew he was sick in the head. He knew he was going to Hell. He knew he was a product of evil. A child of the Devil. Something wrong. Or maybe it wasn't him. Maybe Bucky was the evil one. The temptation. The apple. Maybe Steve was meant to withstand the temptation and if he did God would welcome him with open arms. Or maybe there was no God. He had watched many a soldier lose faith during the war but an equal amount had relied on God to keep them sane. He had hoped that in that Hydra base when he told Bucky to go, to leave him, that maybe, just maybe, he'd meet God, but they made it out. They lived to fight another day, until they didn't. Until Bucky fell and there was no more they, no plural, no 'we made it', just 'he didn't', no more fight left in Steve's body because all he could feel was the vicious sting of loss. 

  
Bucky was gone and grief had replaced him. But there was a war to fight and war didn't go easy on the bereaved, if anything war was harder on them, and Steve just kept falling and falling deeper into the pit of grief until a hand reached down to drag him out. A hand that belonged to Peggy. Peggy who was so different from Bucky. Peggy who kept him sane. Peggy whose voice was so foreign but sounded so much like home at the same time. Peggy whose steps Steve learned to recognise just by the click of her heels. Peggy who wasn't afraid of anything, Peggy who was so strong and confident and commanding. Peggy whose eyes were a deep brown and always looked like they were keeping secrets. Peggy who Steve fell for fast and roughly unlike Bucky. With Bucky it was slowly but surely, it was like there was a rope tied to Steve's heart that drew closer and closer to Bucky until there was no space left between them, their breath and thoughts mingling with every exhale until they forgot what it was like to be without each other and only remembered then, only remembered together. Then the rope snapped. With Peggy there was no rope, there was no mingling of breath or thoughts, there was only her and him. There was no wondering, no wondering how her hand felt in his because he knew, no wondering what it meant when she stole secret glances at him because he knew, no wondering what her lips tasted like because he knew. There was no fear of telling each other how they felt, no fear of showing each other how they felt, no fear of being together or loving each other. Only the fear of losing each other in a war that brought them together. A fear that came to tuition. Steve knew the likelihood of both of them surviving the war but he still had hope, but hope never stood a chance against War, War who tears down everything in its path, War who destroys families, who takes children and forces them to become adults, War who takes boys of fifteen and sixteen and sends them off to their deaths, War who takes one glance at hope and laughs, because War's been through it all before and has watched hope lose every time. War took everything from Steve, War shattered Steve's hopes, his dreams and what was left of his heart. War took Steve's world from underneath his feet and threw him into a new world, a world that Steve had hoped would be different, but as always hope lost and the new world Steve was in was scarily similar to the one he thought he had saved. 

  
This new world was haunted by ghosts of the past. First the ghost of Johan Schmidt in the form of the tesseract, then the ghost of Howard Stark in the form of his son, then the ghost of the life he could have had in the form of his former lover and the life she had gone on to lead, then the ghost of Hydra which was all to alive for Steve to handle, and of course the ghost of his best friend. The ghost of Bucky.   
And by this point Steve had had enough of ghosts. He didn't want the ghost of his best friend, he didn't want whatever evil Hydra had twisted him into. He wanted his best friend, he wanted Bucky Barnes. So Steve dropped his shield, and he refused to fight. He let Bucky throw punch after punch his way. “I'm with you till the end of the line.”, he told him, because he truly believed it, because if he was going to die he was happy dying with Bucky by his side. Even if they went to Hell at least they were together. Just like they should be. But when Steve woke up he wasn't in any form of the afterlife. He was in a hospital bed, with Sam by his side. Steve closed his eyes and tried not to let tears slip out because he knew that although they had won against Hydra and defeated them, he had lost Bucky again. 

  
The truth is that Steve never stopped losing. He had lost everyone from his old life and he knew it wasn't long before he started losing the people in his new life, and he wasn't wrong because soon enough the Avengers were at each other’s throats again and the prospect of another war was at their feet. As always Steve was thrust into the midst of it no one really caring too much if he made it out. But this time was different. Something was off. He could feel it. He knew that the team would never recover from Ultron. The scales had been tipped too far, the balance was off and it would never return. The Avengers were going to rip each other’s throats out and this time there was no going back. 

  
Steve, now convinced he was some kind of omnipotent being, watched as his fears became reality. The Avengers disband. All that was left was him and Natasha. The most broken of them all. And they tried. They really did. They tried so hard to build a new team. To put the pieces together just like Fury had. But the things is, broken people can't create things. At least not lasting things. Broken people who no longer have a memory of what family felt like can't foster a feeling of unity within a team. Broken people can't save the world - can't save the Avengers , but they were the only ones trying, so they tried their damn best. But their best just wasn’t good enough. The accords proved that to them. 

  
The accords managed to tear the Avengers apart more than they ever had been. At least with Ultron they were still on the same side when the fighting broke out. Ultron. It all goes back to Ultron. Steve knew Tony would never be able to live with his grief, Ultron killed so many, and Tony created Ultron. Proving once again that broken people cannot create.

  
When Tony brought them the accords, Steve wasn't shocked. He knew he was going to do something to try and repent, and of course Tony wasn't shocked when Steve was opposed to the idea. The two knew each other too well. They were too alike, yet too different at the same time. Sometimes Steve wonders what Fury was thinking when he put them all together. There was never any hope for them really. Just like Bruce had said, they were a bomb waiting to blow, and the accords were the flame inching closer and closer. But everything had to end eventually. Even life.

  
Losing Peggy took a toll on Steve. He had known she was ill and he had tried to prepare himself but nothing could prepare him for losing her. For losing the only woman he had ever loved, the only woman he would ever love. The person who had stuck with him, through one of the darkest times in his life and had helped pull him out of his grief. The woman who was his last tie to his former life. Until Bucky showed up again and Steve didn't even think twice about fighting for him. He couldn't fight Peggy's illness for her, but he could fight the people who were after his friend. 

  
Every moment of Steve's life was a fight, the fight against Tony - against his friend - being one of the hardest ones he had had to face. But a choice has had to be made and Steve chose Bucky. Steve believed he would always chose Bucky. No matter how hard he had to fight. The only thing he could think of throughout the fight was what Howard would think. Fighting his son, protecting his murderer, maybe Steve wasn’t his greatest creation after all.   
There was one fight though that this new world had taught Steve that he didn't have to grapple with anymore. One war that he would hopefully never have to fight again. The war against himself, the part of himself that loved women and the part of himself that loved men. This new world taught him that those two part of himself didn’t have to fight, that both was okay.

  
So when Steve fought for Bucky he wasn't just fighting for his best friends, he was fighting for someone who could be more than that. Who was allowed be more than that. Who, Steve hoped, would still want to be more than that. Because he always had known. Always. Steve was smart, he noticed the glances and the lingering touches, and Bucky noticed too of course he did but they were scared. Not anymore, Steve told himself, he would never let himself be scared of that anymore. And maybe Howard wouldn't hate him that much, if he knew it was for love. 

  
There was one problem though. Bucky wasn't the same Bucky he used to be, the same Bucky Steve fell in love with and Steve didn't know if he ever would be that Bucky again. So when Bucky made the decision to go into cyro Steve was heart broken, he had just got Bucky back and now he was gone again. But he had hope, he had hope that when Bucky came out of cyro he'd be the same old Buck. The same Buck that taught him so much about the world, the same Buck who made sure he was never left out, the same Buck who ensured Steve never went without a meal, the same Buck Steve had been fighting for all along. But nothing was ever that easy, and hope had never pulled through before. 

  
The day Bucky woke from cyro, Shuri made the decision not to call Steve. She knew that Bucky needed his own time to heal without someone pushing him to remember things. Shuri let him decide himself when he was ready to speak to Steve and when Steve got the message, he was there within a day.

  
“Bucky.” He had whispered breathlessly when he saw him. His hair had grown longer and the stubble on his face had turned into a beard. He took a step closer his arms reaching upwards and Bucky took a step back. Steve let's his arms drop to his sides. “How are you?”

  
"Better than I was." Bucky smiled, but it didn’t quite reached his eyes. It never really did. 

  
Bucky wasn't Bucky, not anymore. At least not the Bucky Steve knew. Steve wasn't able to make Bucky laugh or smile they same way he used to. He could remember it all like it was yesterday. The electric blue of Bucky’s eyes, the softness of his hand, the brightness of his smile and the way his whole face would light up and the lines beside his eyes would crinkle. But Bucky had changed. His face didn't light up when he smiled, his hands were scarred and calloused and the lines on his face weren't from laughter, they were from pain and his eyes, his eyes were the biggest difference. They were duller, much, much duller. Less electric blue and more steel grey, there was no more wonder or joy, no excitement only sadness and the occasional hint of something more - a gleam, of love, of affection. But the gleam was rare. Very rare. Steve didn't know what to do. He felt as if every time he tried to help it backfired. He could see Bucky flinch every time Steve went to say something. Afraid of which memory he was trying to spike in him only to be disappointed, afraid of which horror he might accidentally remind him of in the process.  
The cyro had helped. Of course it had. It had broken Bucky’s brainwashing, but it hadn't brought the old Bucky back. Steve had asked Shuri if there was any more she could do and she had just looked at him with a blank expression and said “I have taken Hydra’s code out of his brain, if you are not happy with what remains that is not my fault, nor is it his.”

  
Steve couldn't accept that she was right. He couldn't accept that the person he had fallen in love with was gone. The old Bucky had to be there somewhere. So he kept pushing. Pushing him to remember something - anything. But he couldn't. He couldn't remember the joy he had found in dancing, in being surrounded by big crowds, all eyes on him, he couldn't remember a time before his sleep was plagued with nightmares. He couldn't remember the first time he met Steve, he remembered a punch and a kick and a flash of a smile but not where and not when. He remembered barely anything of his own family, little of which Steve could help with it. He remembered fragments his mothers hand on his face, her kind eyes, and the smell of food, no smile, no feeling of her arms wrapped around him. He remembered his sisters, their hair and the feeling of it in his hands as he braided it, but he couldn't remember their voices or their faces. He could remember Peggy, not her but the way Steve looked at her, the sparkle in his eyes that he was so used to seeing being directed at him. Steve had been shocked when Bucky told him this. “I remember the way you looked at her.” he had whispered, so ashamed so scared.

  
He remembered the train, he remembered the fall, and he remembered every single mission. But he didn't remember himself. He didn’t remember the kind of clothes he liked to wear. He didn’t remember the way his left arm looked, he didn't remember his face before it was lined with wrinkles, he didn’t remember his chest before it was laced with scars. He didn't remember having short hair, he didn’t remember the sound of his laugh or the rumble of his voice. The only thing he could place were the feelings he got when he looked at Steve, the same feelings he’d had ever since he had met him, ever since he had started rescuing him from bullies twice his size, ever since Captain America had dragged him out of a Hydra base, ever since he screamed 'No, not without you.' Ever since he saw the way he looked at Peggy, ever since he lost that little kid from Brooklyn. Love regret and loss. But of course he didn't tell Steve that because he knew Steve would respond with the same look of pity he had been giving him ever since they found each other again.   
Bucky couldn't take it anymore, he couldn't take Steve’s disappointed looks, his pity, his longing glances he couldn't take the guilt he felt at not being able to be the Bucky Steve fell in love with it. And Steve could tell. He could tell Bucky was uncomfortable around him, that if anything Steve was hindering him, slowing down his healing process, so Steve took it upon himself, and he left. 

  
“You did the right thing.” Sam had reassured him after meeting up in some Eastern European country Steve couldn't even remember the name of. All he could think about was the fact that he had abandoned Bucky, again. 

  
They stayed in contact. Calling every other night. Every time Bucky looking happy, healthier. Every few months Steve visited, staying for a night or two but never longer, never outstaying his welcome. Bucky was happy in Wakanda. He was happy with his goats and Shuri and the villages children to keep him entertained. He was happy without Steve and Steve was happy for him, or at least he tried to be.   
Life went on, and Steve kept moving. Moving from place to place every other night so as not to get caught. Him, Wanda, Sam, and Natasha. Just the four of them against the world. Steve had started to miss the security of the Avengers' compound, all of them had. Not only that but the Avengers themselves, their other teammates. Wanda was always sneaking away to see vision. Nat would always carried a burner phone on her, only one contact in it, Clint, and Sam, poor Sam had a family. He had a mother and a sister, and he missed them desperately. Steve missed it all too, he missed Natasha and Clint’s jokes, he missed Thor’s obliviousness, he missed Bruce, he missed Rhodey and his war machine stories. He missed Tony.   
When Steve got the call his heart stopped beating. He had given up hope of the phone ever ringing and for a minute - a joyfully treacherous minute - Steve thought that maybe, maybe that phone call would be the beginning of something great. But all it was was the beginning of the end. The beginning of a long five year journey to the end. Because a fight was coming. A fight they could only win together. But they weren't together. The Avengers had fallen apart and not even this could bring them all together.

  
Not even losing brought them all together. If anything it tore them further apart. 

  
Natasha was the only one who stayed strong, the only one who was strong enough. There was a period of time when Steve couldn't even get out of bed, the effects of failing and then losing Bucky and Sam at the same time having taken over him, but Natasha was there. She was there and she never left him. Never left his side until he was strong enough to leave hers, and he did. He went into New York City and he stayed there. He helped people, just like Sam would have. He tried to reassure them that everything would be ok. That they would pull through. That there was a light at the end of the dark tunnel. But Steve couldn't see the light, all he could see was darkness going on and on. And then Scott showed up, and he had an idea, and for the first time Steve saw a glimpse of light. Then he lost Natasha. Natasha who was Steve's closest thing to family, Natasha who Steve loved like a sister and the light disappeared. 

  
But it was worth it, wasn't it? Losing Natasha was worth it. Morgan Stark having to grow up without a father was worth it. Half the population. Back. The other half five years older. Five years wiser. Five years more broken. Maybe that's why Steve found it hard to reconnect with Sam. He had five more years of baggage than him. But Steve was from the forties and that had never stopped them before. So what was it? Him, Bucky and Steve had been living in Steve's apartment in New York. Waiting for the compound to be rebuilt. Waiting for Bruce to manufacture a second time travel machine. It had taken a lot longer than the first time which is understandable. Bruce had lost Natasha. He had lost Tony. Five years ago he had just gotten them back.   
Steve had a lot of time to think. To think about the five years that had passed. To think about Bucky who was sleeping in the next room. To think about Sam who was on the couch in the sitting room. To think about Natasha. To think about Peggy. To think about the life he had led full of war and cruelty and sadness and loss and finally he came to a decision.   
Steve Rogers had always been at war, first with himself, then against Hydra, then against Loki, against his best friend, against Ultron, against his teammates, against Thanos and always against time. You could ask anyone in the world and they would all agree, Captain America deserved a break and finally Captain America himself agreed with them. But first, there was someone he had to say goodbye to. 

  
Bucky sat on his bed staring at the mechanical arm on the floor. Well it wasn't really his bed. It belonged to Steve. It was in Steve’s apartment. It had Steve’s bedclothes on it. The arm was on Steve's floor. His arm. Not hydras. His. He closed his eyes taking a deep breath, leaning his head back against the wall behind him, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He could hear the sounds of New York City outside his window. The beeping of cars, the shouting of people the sirens speeding passed going every which way, it was all too much. He wanted to be back in Wakanda. Back with his goats. Shuri had asked him if he wanted to return. Of course she had. She was Shuri. But Steve had been so happy to see him. So, so happy. Bucky couldn't just leave. So him and Sam went to New York. They moved into Steve’s apartment. Temporarily. Until the two of them found their footing in the world. The world that was five years older.   
Bucky looked to his door. He could here the shuffle of feet outside it. "Come in Steve." He said before he could knock. 

  
"How’d you know it was me?" 

  
"Sam’s on a run and unless there's a fourth person living here…" Bucky shrugged. 

  
Steve let out a soft laugh. "I need to talk to you." he said, and Bucky’s mind went haywire. Bucky hadn’t had a home since before the war, Hydra wasn’t a home, his flat in Bulgaria wasn’t a home, Wakanda, no matter how kind T’challa and Shuri were to him, wasn’t a home. Bucky had thought moving in with Steve would give him that sense of home again, that feeling of safety, of comfort. It didn’t. Not at all. Bucky felt out of place, like he wasn’t welcome there, and he knew that Sam felt the same, the feeling that Steve didn’t want them there, or didn’t want to be there himself, it as if was waiting for something else, someone else. They felt that Steve was only biding his time with them until something better came along. Though they would never admit it, not to themselves, not to each other, because then it would make it real. Despite not having any semblance of a memory of what it felt like to feel at home, he knew that it wasn’t what he felt in that apartment with Sam and Steve, but it was a steady place to live, something that was rare to Bucky and he was grateful for it, and now Steve was coming to him to tell him something, sometime that he had to wait until the third occupant of the flat had left to tell him and all Bucky could think was that Steve was throwing him out, that he was finally sick of him, sick of seeing his face, of being reminded of Hydra, of all the wrongs Bucky had committed, sick of being woken up at night by his screams. But it wasn’t Bucky Steve was sick of, it was something much bigger than Bucky himself.

  
"I'm leaving." Steve stated, you see Steve had grown tired of the 21st century, of his life, of having to live with his failures. He wasn’t the only one of course, so many of those who returned from the blip and so many if those who had been abandoned during the blood felt the same feeling of discontentment, of displacement.

  
“What?” Bucky questioned, convinced he misheard him. Steve would never leave, kick him out, he could believe, grow tired of him, he was definite would happen eventually but leave? It wasn’t until Steve’s nature to run away, it never had been, but things change.

  
“I’m leaving.”

  
Bucky was still confused, beyond confused. “Leaving where? Where are you going?”

  
“Bruce has the time machine set up, I'm returning the stones tomorrow.” Steve paused looking up ag his friend, at the friend he had given so much up for. “And I'm not coming back.” 

  
“What do you mean you’re not coming back? Where are you going?” And then it clicked in Bucky’s head, and his face dropped, his heart stopping in his chest. “You're going back to Peggy.” He whispered. 

  
Steve nodded. 

  
“Why?” Bucky gasped, baffled. “Why?” 

  
“I love her.” 

  
“You barely know her” He spat.

  
“I barely know you!” 

  
Bucky was taken aback by that, he knew Steve had felt it, but he had never said it out loud before. How could Steve ever know who he was when Bucky himself didn’t know. He stood up slowly trying to remain calm and not collapse into a ball of tears. He faced away from Steve not being able to look at him for fear that he would see how – how weak Bucky was. Everything Bucky did was for Steve, for his benefit and he was repaying him by choosing her.

“Did you know that you are the only reason I am here?”

  
“Buck-”

  
“No, don't ‘Buck’ me” Bucky snapped turning around to face Steve. “You are the only reason I ever broke out of Hydra’s mind control. You're the reason I was trying so hard to - to find myself to - to remember who I was.”

  
“That's the problem Bucky. You are never going to find that person you are never going to be that person. And if I stick around and let that keep going on you're going to keep trying and I'm going to keep waiting for something that is impossible. I'm going back to Peggy because I want to live a happy life. I want to get married and I want to have kids and I want to grow old with someone I love someone I know. Someone who knows me.”

  
“I know you.” Bucky pleaded. 

  
“Not anymore Buck. Not anymore.” Steve signed and collapsed onto Bucky’s bed.   
“I just wanted you to love me.” Bucky turned his back again. Not wanting Steve to see the tears in his eyes. 

  
“I do Buck. I do. But we couldn't have it then and it was stupid of us to think we could have it now. We're too old. Too different. Please Buck. I can't leave without knowing that you understand why.”

  
Bucky turned around, tears streaming freely down his face. “I'll come with you.” He begged. 

  
“No. No you won't buck. You can start a life here. A new life.”

  
“I don't want a new life I want a life with you. Please.”

  
“We can't have it. I wish we could but we can't. Because you don't love me. You love who you think I am. And I don't love you. I love who you used to be.”  
“But I can love you. I can love the new you please just let me show you. Please.”

  
“I'm sorry Bucky." Steve said standing up and walking towards the door. He paused placing a hand on the doorframe. "I'm giving Sam the shield by the way. I trust he'll make a better Captain America than I did.”   
And then he was gone, Bucky left sobbing in to his pillows. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so basically this is a fifteen thousand word w.i.p that I've been working on since August and I've kind of hit a block so I'm ignoring the other ten thousand words and just leaving this here because it works if I ever finish it I'll make it into a series but until then this is all you have. Thank you so much for reading comments and kudos are appreciated.


End file.
